


Glowworm fallacy

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, I wrote this for myself but you can read it if you want, Other, Parasitic Pseudo Hive God Nonsense, Pre Shadowkeep, post Forsaken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22988551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which Adamantine is guilty, and her gun wakes up
Relationships: Xol (Destiny)/Guardian
Kudos: 7





	Glowworm fallacy

**Author's Note:**

> Really need to edit this but I want to show my raid group and I’m late for school  
> *I'm editing this in a raid

Adamantine can’t remember ever wanting to shirk a mess she made off on someone else. Which given the small but existent number trailing her name she admits, doesn’t mean much. In this life though she knows with absolute certainty she charges problems without rest. Which is probably why Zavala gives her the same disappointed look each time she signs up for the weekly strike against the Fanatic. She remembers what it was like when he was proud of her accomplishments, when he’d hold her up as an example like any one of his favoured Titans.  
Adamantine doesn’t blame him for the distance. But the whole way to the shore, she thinks of both her leader’s growing distance rather than the atmosphere leak from her rickety lightless jumpship. She doesn’t blame Ikora, she’s been so tired with the mounting pressure of the world the warlocks and the many hidden things she weaves around both. She doesn’t blame Zavala. He’s been disappointed with her since that mars debacle, and her recent rebellion hadn’t helped her image. Mars had been worth it though, she’d gained more than she lost. Learned how to kill a new sort of god.  
The airless edge of the reef grew quickly visible through the spiderweb shatters of her cockpit. Her stripped down ship was faster than the ones which carried rations and oxygen, and asking her Ghost confirmed the rest of her team where still about half an hour out. She asked him to send her ship to orbit on a whim, transmatting to the loose rubble instead of the standard landing zone. The traversal was mindless and tricky enough she couldn’t worry about anything but what weapons she wanted to bring. Swinging off an errant support wire gave enough momentum to tumble into the landing. More time and Scorn spilling out of their burrows to kill. Adamantine ran a fond hand down glassy black spines, pulled out a smaller rifle instead and settled in to wait.

Dark ether condensation pooled in sticky clouds, high enough that when she bowed a greeting at her two partners it would have made a living thing sick to breathe. The small heat of her reactor was enough to burn it off before they even left.

Her partners where two veterans of assassination operations if their gear was to be believed. Efficient enough to back the assumption up. The three of them cut through bubbling masses of Scorn, the Fanatic’s jeering questions old news to Adamantine. She guides them to the right places to stand. Sashays down rusted walkways and holds her fingers out above her head in a mockery of their horns whenever he breaks into their comms to accuse them of murder. She thinks it helps them a little but she can’t be sure. They’re new to this foe but Adamantine has him down to a science. The locks break, the screebs pop beneath her stride, she knows the exact caliber of round they use in their walkers. She knows exactly how much of a hit she can take and the opening obscuring smoke will buy. She tears her glove testing the point of her weapon, tanks the blow and slips into a crouch still smouldering. The scorn are stupid, they turn to her panicking allies because they make more noise. The crunch Whisper makes when fired isn’t enough to alert them, but it’s comforting to her. Two shots shatter the shield then the body of a chieftain. The third wrenches the leg off the walker, hazy blue shield blooming over the trauma. The fire snuffs itself out, the metal of and on her body bleed back together in the way abominations wish they could. Whisper’s sound feels like breaking open an ogre skull between her mandibles, like the promise of tusks and eating just for the pleasure of it. She’s always reluctant to put it down, but the tank twitches prone and she can’t resist. It’s slung on her back and she darts to the steaming neck of the beast. A fistful of explosive light clears her approach and two clips stagger it again. Her team finish with the small masses, understand to continue and together they put it down.  
They don’t panic again until they reach the heart of the infestation. One falls, the other leaves her side in a rush to bring them back. Adamantine wants to yell they’ll be fine, that Cayde’s death was a costly trick and as long as one still stands they will survive to fight again. Yelling might throw off her aim though, so she stops breathing, opens up her serratus vents and fires a neat round into the approaching Scorn’s thigh, leaving them to bleed out in front of her while she picks off the farthest and newest.

The trick with Scorn is attrition. The Fanatic trapped here, dancing with death as he likes to say can not convert new numbers. He can patch up the shreds of meat she and other guardians leave, and they seem good as new. But the stitches to pull them together grow wider, their minds grow looser. They are bandaging over death. They are scraping for existence on poison and patchwork. Eventually, a year or centuries from now there won’t be enough to pull into any shape resembling a fighter. The Fanatic approaches and Adamantine knows how seeming immortality can make you confident. She knows it better than she knows the slow pull through the air, opening the three of them up to enemy fire. Almost as well as the explosion of light she sets loose, levelling the field and evaporating the weak. He’s called this a never ending dance, but even though she doesn’t subscribe to any of the weapon logics she knows anything can die. Anyone can be killed. She’s raised in the air again, and watches with careful timing. Adamantine holds a dead god in her hands and peers down his scope. When the Fanatic is felled by them again she thinks this is what it might be like for living things to satiate hunger, and her Whisper in the back of her mind stirs to agree.


End file.
